A GROUP of seven students on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition had to be rescued from a Snowdonia mountainside after getting stuck in thick cloud.

Only two of the group had maps and they became separated from the rest of the party as darkness fell on Monday night.

An assessor who went to their aid plunged 60 feet down a rockface and had to be winched to safety. The 26-year-old man injured his knee and arms in the fall.

He raised the alarm on his mobile phone and was found by a helicopter crew from RAF Valley.

He was winched off the rock face on the Gribin Ridge near Devil’s Kitchen and taken to Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor, for treatment.

The assessor had been in a car at Cwm Idwal car park waiting for the students to return to base after they’d been tasked with climbing up the Glyderau above Bethesda.

But the group – who had been camping in the Ogwen Valley – got lost and radioed the assessor asking for help.

The incident sparked a major search by Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue volunteers.

Spokesman Chris Lloyd said there were “lessons to be learned”.

Mr Lloyd said: “Every member of the party should have had a map; they should have stayed together and they shouldn’t have gone up when it was getting misty.”

He said: “We were called about 8.30pm that a party of seven students aged around 17 who were on the Duke of Edinburgh gold award were lost on the Glyder range. They had come up Glyder Fawr from Pen y Gwryd and come into cloud. They’d progressed across heading into Glyder Fach but had got lost.”

In fact, the party had walked the wrong way and ended up at Cwm Cneifion.

Mr Lloyd said: “The party had split up and become stuck. Two girls with maps had managed to make their way down to Cwm Idwal. The group on the mountain had used radios to contact their assessors to say that they got lost.

“The assessor and a climbing colleague made their way up and climbed up to the Big Wall. However, the assessor fell 20 metres and suffered deep lacerations to his knee and arms and that’s when we were called.

“We deployed a search team in thick cloud and we requested 22 Squadron’s help once we had the location. They came in through the darkness and were able to pick up the casualty and two people stuck on the Big Wall.

“Another ground team took up a stretcher and another group were also nearby. One remaining student was found and we were down the mountain by 3.30am.”

Mr Lloyd said the area where the seven students from various schools in South Hertfordshire were found was “loose, steep, broken ground”.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award’s Emma Maguire said: “It appears that the young people acted correctly and followed the procedures that they had learnt during their training on how to respond should they find themselves in difficulty. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award will work with Hertfordshire County Council to review the incident.”